The University of Bucharest, part of the CIVIS project “Birds on our campuses”

Between January 22^nd – February 10^th 2024, The University of Bucharest will start the process of identifying birds on its campus as part of the CIVIS project “Birds on our campuses”, an initiative coordinated by Aix-Marseille University in collaboration with Glasgow, the Autonomous University in Madrid and the University of Lausanne.

In the last few years, the decline of common bird species has become a major environmental problem, with a loss over 30% of their number. “Birds on our campuses” took shape, in spring 2023, in the attempt to evaluate and approach this situation.

 This initiative aims to engage academic communities of CIVIS member universities in the process of increasing awareness concerning the biodiversity of their campus. At the same time, the projects extends towards CIVIS Open Labs, thus facilitating the implication of local communities in the activities of the project. People outside the academic sphere have the chance to contribute to the research activity.

Associate professor Cristina Andreea Staicu, PhD, teaching staff at the UB Faculty of Biology, is coordinating the process of identifying the birds on the campus of the University of Bucharest, thus offering a unique perspective on local biodiversity.  

For this project, researchers have chosen three periods of the year during which they will run the project: spring, autumn and winter. The first experimental stage of the project – spring – took place between April 17^th and May 13^th 2023. This year, with the beginning of the winter season, the project has started its new essential stage: researching bird behavior under winter conditions, thus adding to the complexity of the data collected.

In order to manage this project efficiently, researchers have an aiding tool – the iNaturalist scientific platform. Therefore, by using technology, this project unites research within CIVIS member universities, adding a valuable contribution to monitoring biodiversity at international level.

More information on the project “Birds on our campuses” are available here and here.

CIVIS is an European University Alliance reuniting 11 member universities: Aix-Marseille Université (France), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), The University of Bucharest (Romania), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy), Stockholm University (Sweden), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany), Glasgow University (Great Britain), Paris Lodron University in Salzburg (Austria) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Selected by the European Commission as one of the first 17 pilot-universities alliances, CIVIS reunites approximately 500,000 students and over 70,000 staff members, including 37,400 teaching staff and researchers.